Our Author Newsletter

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

The importance of our author newsletter is reiterated by everyone from Joanna Penn to Mark Dawson. This is because our list of subscribers is something authors own. If Facebook or Twitter were to close down tomorrow, we’d lose our followers there—but we’d still have our newsletter.

Readers who sign up for our newsletter tend to be the most interested in our work. These are the readers we want to alert to our new releases since they’ll purchase and review the books early, leading to better visibility on retail sites like Amazon.

It took me a long time to finally put together a newsletter. I think part of the reason I was a slow adopter is because I already felt as though I were behind. If only I’d started years ago! But it’s never too late to start putting a list together and have it start working for you.

If you’re starting from scratch, you’re first going to want to find an email newsletter service to handle subscriptions for you. I use MailChimp, which is free for up to 2,000 subscribers. For more information about setting up a newsletter and for the different services available, industry expert Jane Friedman has great advice in her post “Email Newsletters for Authors: Get Started Guide.”

You can make your newsletter signup pitch more visually appealing by encasing it in an image. Image creation is easy with a free tool like Canva.  Create an image (I used a simple one with a book cover and my picture and a bit of text) and then hyperlink the entire image to your newsletter signup page (here’s how to find your signup form link on MailChimp).

Do you need more newsletter subscribers?  Consider giving away a free book to anyone who signs up for your newsletter. You could offer to give away Amazon gift cards, coffee mugs with your cover on them, etc.

Are you linking to your newsletter signup in your email signature? On your blog?  In the front/back of your books?  On your Amazon/Nook/Smashwords/Wattpad/Goodreads bios?  On your Facebook profile?  Linking to the signup at reader-facing sites and in our email signature is a non-pushy way to get more subscribers.

My readers seem to appreciate a personal tone in my newsletters.  I include recipes at the end, a popular feature for cozy mystery readers. But aside from a personal touch and the recipes, they especially want to be updated on my book progress and any new releases. You can experiment with your newsletter content and its frequency, adjusting it for your genre and readers and what their interests are.

Do you have an author newsletter? What are your thoughts on service providers and frequency of contact with our readers?

Elizabeth writes the Southern Quilting mysteries and Memphis Barbeque mysteries for Penguin Random House and the Myrtle Clover series for Midnight Ink and independently. She curates links on Twitter as @elizabethscraig that are later shared in the free search engine WritersKB.com and blogs at elizabethspanncraig/blog. Elizabeth makes her home in Matthews, North Carolina, with her husband and two teenage children.

A Definition Of Author Platform

Platform is one of the most difficult concepts to explain, partly because everyone defines it a little differently.
But one thing that I know for sure: Editors and agents are attracted to authors who have this thing called “platform.”

What editors and agents typically mean by platform

They’re looking for someone with visibility and authority who has proven reach to a target audience.
Let’s break this down further.

• Visibility. Who knows you? Who is aware of your work? Where does your work regularly appear? How many people see it? How does it spread? Where does it spread? What communities are you a part of? Who do you influence? Where do you make waves?
• Authority. What’s your credibility? What are your credentials? (This is particularly important for nonfiction writers; it is less important for fiction writers, though it can play a role. Just take a look at any graduate of the Iowa MFA program.)
• Proven reach. It’s not enough to SAY you have visibility. You have to show where you make an impact and give proof of engagement. This could be quantitative evidence (e.g., size of your e-mail newsletter list, website traffic, blog comments) or qualitative evidence (high-profile reviews, testimonials from A-listers in your genre).
• Target audience. You should be visible to the most receptive or appropriate audience for the work you’re trying to sell. For instance: If you have visibility, authority, and proven reach to orthodontists, that probably won’t be helpful if you’re marketing vampire fiction (unless perhaps you’re writing about a vampire orthodonist who repairs crooked vampire fangs?).

What platform is NOT

• It is not about self-promotion.
• It is not about hard selling.
• It is not about annoying people.
• It is not about being an extrovert.
• It is not about being active on social media.
• It is not about blogging.

(This excerpt is taken from an article written by Jane Friedman and posted on her blog, Jane Friedman: Helping Authors and Publishers Flourish In The Digital Age. You can read the rest of the article HERE )